Shattering the illusion of "elite education" and the mystique of the Ivy League, one unemployment story at a time

My name’s Clayton Thomas and I currently work as a software developer. I graduated from Duke University in 2006 with a bachelor’s of science in biology and a minor in chemistry, and I’m no stranger to elite private schooling. My father and his father were both Ivy League grads (Yale and Columbia). I spent the better part of my adolescence enrolled in accelerated precollege coursework at Stanford, and attended multiple summer programs at Duke and Princeton in junior high and high school. I prepped heavily for the SAT, SAT IIs, and AP exams. The reward I reaped was a 1570 SAT I (99.9th percentile) and offers of admission at Yale, Duke, and MIT. My father pushed me to be a doctor, so I chose Duke for its pre-med program and research opportunities. Four years (and $200,000) later, I graduated a published biochemistry and genetics researcher with a respectable 3.6 GPA.

So, as you might imagine, I never expected that after finishing college, I would be utterly unable to find work, and would spend the next four years living in my mother’s basement, angry, burned out, and bewildered… alternating between unemployment and underemployment, waiting tables and delivering pizzas, but never finding anything better, let alone anything relevant to my degree. After years of struggling to find my way to independence and financial stability, I instead found myself in a state of maddening isolation and frustration. In 2010, hopeless and despondent, I finally gave up on my “elite” degree, realizing that all along the problem lay in the total impracticality of everything I’d spent my life studying. At this point, I went back to school, this time at a humble community college, where I studied computer science. Ironically, upon graduating I found work immediately, and two years later, I’m now a successful software consultant at a rapidly growing Silicon Valley company. And for over a year I’ve been living overseas, traveling the world, studying foreign languages, and honing my skills as a photographer while making a living writing code.

I established this blog at the height of my frustrations, and have maintained it both as a personal sounding board and as a tool to disseminate information and advice to those considering an education at one of our nation’s many private universities. I am living proof of two things: first, that even a top-rated education and a life spent studying are no guarantee of anything – and second, that an education in something pragmatic can carry you far, even if it comes from a school no one’s heard of.

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12 Responses

Success in life is strange and is not guaranteed to anyone. You could have gone to MIT majored in CS and had 5.0 GPA but may have been unemployed for a year or more. In life, you have to deal with what comes to you and do the best and this generally provides success and happiness. Blaming Duke does not help anyone including you. Best is to look forward and see how best to get ahead.
Note: I am not a Duke alumnus but my boss is and has a mediocre GPA but is doing extremely well as far as career is concerned.

I agree completely with you. Incidentally, I did look forward, I went back to school at a public college, got a second degree, and changed careers. I now make six figures and live abroad working as a software consultant.

The point of this blog is not so much to place blame, but rather to highlight exactly your point – that attending a top-notch school is no guarantee of anything, and also that one’s academic success is not necessarily a harbinger of professional success to come. I, like many students, was under the impression – er, illusion – that a degree from such a university would set me up for success later in life. It’s my hope that this blog will help to shatter that illusion and encourage more practical thinking by prospective college students.

It sounds like you had the undergraduate degree that was intended for you to continue studying and pursuing your graduate degree. You chose not to, the same mistake I made, so you we were left in the frustrating situation of building our careers from scratch with a degree that might not have been the most practical choice. I chose to study Psychology without thinking of the debt I would have to take on to pay off a masters or doctoral degree. The mindset you had your whole life was to pursue something that would require more education, and when you chose not to pursue the education, should you be surprised that you ended up where you did? You could have attended any graduate school of your choice with your grades.

I agree that biology probably is an “undergraduate degree that was intended for you to continue studying” – but this was never communicated by my academic and professional advisors. If a degree doesn’t provide any value on its own, that’s a critical thing to know before you commit to pursuing it. Was my decision to study bio an impractical one? In hindsight, absolutely, but I had no idea at the time, being sheltered in Ivory Tower environs and blind to the practical realities that lay ahead.

The option to pursue a PhD in biology was presented to me after I graduated, but it was unappealing. It was at that point that I started looking at the ROI of degrees, and the likely increase in income scarcely justified the investment of 6 more years of educational grind, not to mention the need to go massively in debt (especially if I pursued graduate education at a private university) and realistically be stuck paying it back into my 40s or 50s.

In the end, I opted to change careers rather than pursue a PhD in biology. I got a public-school degree in Computer Science at minimal cost with no loans whatsoever, and now I work in software, where the pay is good, the work is secure, and I’ve had the opportunity to live abroad and travel the world. I have a great life now – but no thanks to my Duke education. My biggest takeaway from Duke was just how impractical my private-school degree was. I feel compelled to share this experience with the world, in hopes that others can learn from my mistakes.

Except that a PhD program in biology worth going to is fully funded, that is, you get paid to attend (of course with a couple provisos: TA duties, and later, RA duties, at which point you will spend most of your time at school in a lab)…

You’re right, I should include more detail on this. Long story short, I abandoned the medical school plan after shadowing a cardiac surgeon and getting a taste of the lifestyle – e.g., working 100-hour weeks as a resident, and being on call all the time – and the education required – he didn’t finish his training till he was 37 years old, and he was on the standard track, with no breaks in training. I did prepare for the MCAT and med school applications, but I decided not to go forward with them in the end. The thought of being in school well into my 30s was unappealing, to say the least.

Anyway, being a doctor was always my father’s dream, not mine. He strongly encouraged me (to put it nicely) to be a doctor, I think because he saw it as a prestigious and lucrative job, the sort of thing you can brag about to the neighbors.

By the time I decided to change course, near the end of my 3rd year at Duke, it wasn’t practical to switch majors and still graduate on time. Duke’s curriculum matrix (the classes required to graduate) was so extensive and complicated, especially for science majors, that it left little room for personal choice when selecting classes. Changing majors would have meant spending at least an extra year at the university, which at $50,000/year, my parents couldn’t really afford, and I had no appetite for student loans. I was already burnt out and eager to graduate anyway, so even if I’d had the money, I didn’t want to spend any longer there than necessary.

It was at that point that I began seriously evaluating alternative career options, and then I came to realize that a biology degree (or a chemistry or physics degree, for that matter) is pretty useless on its own. This is when I really felt let down – why is a top-notch private school with such high costs offering degrees which are of no use, and why are they not advising their students of likely career prospects – or lack thereof – when discussing possible majors with them?

In the end, I found my way, but no thanks to Duke. At every stage, I was left to flounder and guess my way through in isolation. I could have done that without sacrificing four years of hard effort and $200,000.

You sound like a loser to me…nobody forced you into taking those classes. And why would a school not offer biology, especially for students that want to take it and have a plan with it (like grad or med scbool)? Take responsibility for your own life

You’re entitled to your opinion, although I’m not sure how you’d justify it based on my current circumstances (I work in software consulting, making six figures and enjoying the expat life).

I certainly wouldn’t suggest that universities drop their biology degrees; merely that they should advise students of their likely professional prospects, to get them thinking hard about whether their choice of degree will be worthwhile, or if there will be professional constraints (e.g., biology is basically a worthless degree if you don’t pursue a PhD, but my advisers at Duke never told me this).

At 18, I wasn’t sure what major or career I wanted to pursue. Was that my fault? Sure, to an extent anyway, but I was hardly unique in that respect. A lot of college freshmen don’t know what to major in or what type of career they want to pursue. Everyone’s experience is different. Some know up front what they want and chase it; others aren’t sure but stumble into a good line of study (and work) before they graduate. Still others graduate with a degree they either didn’t care for, or else thought they’d be able to apply professionally but realize (only after graduating) that it isn’t as useful as they’d been led to believe. I fall into the last category.

People joke about “useless majors” like art history or sociology, and tend to blame the students for their poor judgment in choosing such majors, but universities have a responsibility to guide their students as well. In this respect, Duke fell flat and I was left to figure things out on my own. If universities did a better job of raising awareness about likely career prospects, it would spare students a lot of hardship.

I need to step in and peacefully say ” No you are not a loser at all in anyway. That is totally false as it takes courage to discuss this issue and it is important to do so. Thanks for offering this blog. I really appreciate it. I have had similar struggles. The most important theme is to take the mud and plant an amazing garden with it. Acknowledge the difficulty but use it to create something positive. it’s important to be able to acknowledge the difficulty to be able to put it to work to create something positive. We all have mud we need to plant into the earth to create an awesome mango tree.”

I’m glad you found your way. In my opinion this is a very common problem. We’re often forced to make a decision based on very limited experience and only in hindsight is our vision 20/20. How many students go into college with the expectation that they want to be a doctor or lawyer or whatever other kind of profession without knowing what that kind of occupation entails? Sure at 18 we’re legally adults and in charge of our destinies but honestly at 18 most people are just big kids and don’t really know anything (though they may think they do). I thought I knew what I wanted and at the very end of my degree did I start having doubts. I ended up going to grad school in a different area (thankfully my first degree was not completely unrelated) and am currently happy with my decision although I’m still in grad school and have only had internships so far.

Perhaps the best thing you can do for yourself is get a degree requiring science/math. This may give employers the perception that you are a competent individual and then you can jump ship if you don’t like your field or can’t find employment in your field. Obviously I don’t have all the answers either.